The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (8 page)

There were famed legends like that of the seven sleepers: seven boys walled up in a cave to die during the Roman persecutions of early Christians. But instead of dying, the boys (plus, in one version, a dog) miraculously fell into a deep slumber for two hundred years, when they were discovered and wakened to learn that Christianity had triumphed. (Ironically, Muslims now know the story better than most Christians, since it is cited in the Quran). The seven sleepers were so popular that everyone, no matter where they came from, sought to claim them, placing the cave in their own part of the world with a kind of geographical possessiveness that still persists. In much the same way that modern pilgrims can find the place where John the Baptist’s head is buried in at least three different locations in the Middle East, those wishing to visit the cave of the seven sleepers still have a choice: near Ephesus in Turkey, a few miles north of Damascus in Syria, or just outside Amman in Jordan.

The differences went deeper than legend, however. Christians and Jews both venerated the Bible, yet they held up different versions of it. And when it came to what these books might mean, there was intense argument not only between but within the two monotheisms. Jews were divided between the teachings of this rabbi or that, between the Jerusalem Talmud and the new Babylonian one, or between legalism and messianism. And the Christians were still more deeply divided, caught up in bitter and sometimes violent internecine rivalry. Seemingly abstruse questions as to whether Jesus was both God and man, or God in human form—whether he had one nature or two—had become highly politicized, creating such deep rifts that the Byzantine Empire was essentially at war with itself as various provinces sided with one theopolitical entity or another.

For an adolescent trying to cement a life from the shards of loss and displacement, the monotheistic idea has to have been immensely powerful. It resonated with what Muhammad knew of the stark purity of the desert, that sense of an animating force far greater than anything human. It spoke to his own yearning for unity, for a way to bridge the gap he experienced between belonging and not belonging. And it seemed to offer the grand ideal of all peoples coming together in acknowledgment of a force so beyond human comprehension that one could only stand in awe of it and acknowledge the pettiness of human differences. Yet everywhere he looked, what should surely bring people together only seemed to drive them apart. The more they preached what the prophets had said, from Moses down through Jesus, the less they seemed to hear those same prophets’ words. How could the idea of divine unity result in such human disunity? How could monotheism create such sectarianism? Were humans destined to be divided by what should surely unite them?

hether you credit the monk Bahira’s mystical foresight or abuTalib’s sharp merchant’s eye, it did not take long for the uncle to note that his nephew was both genuinely observant and quick to learn. Muhammad seemed somehow to anticipate abu-Talib’s needs. He’d be there when wanted yet fade into the background when not; run an errand even before his uncle fully realized it needed to be run; check on deliveries and keep track of inventory. As the boy entered his teens, abu-Talib began to rely on him more, taking him with him as he went about his business. The caravans would now become Muhammad’s professional education as well as his cultural and religious one.
He saw how his uncle was always the first to reach out and clasp

the other’s hands in his own: a politician’s handshake, making the other feel honored, drawn in, special. He watched as the merchants followed the time-honored tradition of hospitality graciously given and graciously received, as they sipped tea and honey-sweetened milk and pomegranate juice, savored stuffed dates and piquant delicacies wrapped in vine leaves, and dipped their bread into a common dish in acknowledgment of the bond between those who break bread together. He listened through the seemingly endless rounds of negotiation, learning the slow and stately dance in which each participant held the other off even as he invited him in, judging the degree of welcome and distance, of give and take, until finally trust was established and the deal was sealed.

As he worked his way up to abu-Talib’s side, Muhammad learned the value of the goods they carried from Mecca. There were the relatively mundane loads such as leather and wool, as well as small amounts of gold and silver mined in the Hijaz mountains, to be worked into daggers and jewelry by the famed craftsmen of Damascus. But the lightest, most compact, and by far the most profitable of all their cargo was still more precious: myrrh and frankincense. There were fortunes to be made in these aromatic resins. Painstakingly tapped from the seemingly inconspicuous thorny scrubs that grew only in the highlands of Yemen, Ethiopia, and Somalia, they were in high demand throughout the Byzantine and Persian empires. Urban sophisticates favored myrrh as a perfume and deodorant. Mourners massaged the bodies of the dead with it before wrapping them in their shrouds. Vast amounts of frankincense were burned in churches, the smoke perfuming the air and anointing the lungs of the faithful, and it was thrown by the handful onto the sacred Zoroastrian fires of Persia to make the flames leap and sparkle in a dramatic rainbow of colors. Carrying nine different species of frankincense, as well as myrrh in both oil and crystal form, a merchant like abu-Talib could triple or even quadruple his original investment. After expenses, that is.

The Meccan caravan trade was no ad hoc affair. It was organized as a cartel and run by a syndicate. This financing system redounded to the benefit of all, or at least all who were allowed in. In the years Muhammad worked for abu-Talib, the largest shares were held by the four main clans of the Quraysh, but many others had minority shares, including individuals. Tolls, protection money, customs duties, and sales taxes were all paid by the syndicate and factored in, with a share of each member’s profits deducted to cover the costs of administration. Here too diplomacy was needed to defuse the inevitable arguments about the distribution of profits, and here too Muhammad learned quickly, becoming as skilled at calming ruffled egos as he was at negotiating differences. By the time he was in his early twenties, he’d become abu-Talib’s trusted lieutenant on the long caravan journeys, and had risen so far in his uncle’s estimation that he was treated almost as a son. But only almost.

f the two men had not been close, Muhammad would never have asked what he did. He’d never have felt he had the right to even broach the idea. So when he requested the hand of abu-Talib’s daughter Fakhita in marriage, he certainly cannot have expected to be refused. Yet he was.

This was no tale of young star-crossed lovers, however. Marriage in the sixth century was a far more pragmatic arrangement. We know nothing of Fakhita aside from her name. Muhammad’s proposal was made to the father, not the daughter. In effect, he was asking abu-Talib to publicly acknowledge their closeness by declaring him not just “like a son” but a full member of the family. He would no longer be merely a poor relation who had risen in the world, but a son-in-law.

Abu-Talib’s decision had nothing to do with the fact that Muhammad and Fakhita were first cousins. Gregor Mendel and the science of genetics were still eleven hundred years in the future, and marriage between cousins was as common in the sixth century, both in Arabia and elsewhere, as it had been in biblical times. It was considered a means of strengthening the internal bonds of a clan, and indeed would remain so in the marriage patterns of European royalty well into the twentieth century. So there is only one possible reason for abu-Talib’s denial of his nephew’s request: he did not consider this an advantageous marriage for his daughter. No matter how much he trusted and relied on Muhammad, the father was not about to marry his daughter to an orphan with no independent means. He intended for her to marry into the Meccan elite, and quickly made a more suitably aristocratic match for her.

If Bahira had indeed foreseen a great future for Muhammad, abuTalib had clearly not taken him seriously. And if Muhammad had imagined that he had overcome the limitations of his childhood, he was now harshly reminded that they still applied. Abu-Talib’s denial of his request carried a clear message. “This far and no further,” he was saying in effect. “Good but not good enough.” In his uncle’s mind, Muhammad was still “one of us, yet not one of us.”

In time, abu-Talib would come to regret this rejection of Muhammad. The two men would eventually overcome the rift it caused between them and become closer than ever. But in a pattern that was to recur throughout Muhammad’s life, rejection would work to his long-term advantage. Abu-Talib’s denial of him as a son-in-law would turn out to be one of those ironic twists that determine history—or, if you wish to see things that way, fate. If Muhammad had married his cousin, nobody today might even know his name. Without the woman he did go on to marry, he might never have found the courage and determination to undertake the major role that waited for him.

t was an unusual marriage. She was older than he, and while accounts vary as to exactly how much older, most settle on age forty for her, twenty-five for him. Not that this was what made the marriage unusual. Except, that is, to many Western scholars. Revealing more about themselves than about Muhammad, they’d assume it had to be a marriage of convenience. Specifically, financial convenience. He married her for her money, they’d say—the “wealthy widow” syndrome—since it seemed to them self-evident that there was no way he could have been attracted to her. One or two, of a more psychoanalytical bent, imagined that he saw her as a mother figure, the orphan seeking a substitute for the mother he had lost at age six. Few seem to have considered that he really did love her.

In fact the difference in age meant little in a culture where multiple marriage was common. Whether serial marriages due to death or divorce, or polygamous ones among the elite, the practice meant that an aunt might be younger than her nephew, one half-brother a generation older than another, and a first cousin the age we would now expect of an uncle or a niece. It is certainly true, however, that few of these marriages were love matches. The vast majority were political or financial arrangements, tying one clan or tribe to another. Which is not to say that romantic love did not exist. The pre-Islamic bards celebrated it in vivid detail, just not within the bounds of marriage, which was a pragmatic matter, not a romantic one.

Yet the relationship between Muhammad and Khadija seemed anything but pragmatic, and this is what has really so confounded scholars. The most cogent explanation for their long, monogamous marriage is also the simplest: they had a real bond of deep love and affection, one that lasted twenty-four years. She would be the one person most central to Muhammad’s accepting his public role, but she would do so quietly, contributing little to the later myth-making about him, since she’d die before he began to attract large-scale support.

Long after her death, he would hold her up as far superior to any of his later wives, declaring that he would never find that kind of love again. How could he when he was already the leader of a burgeoning new faith—the revered prophet, the messenger of God, the one whom people vied to be close to, to have his ear? Khadija loved him for himself, not for who he would become, and he would never forget her in those later years, turning pale with grief at the sound of any voice that reminded him of hers.

What made the marriage unusual, then, was not the age difference but its closeness, especially given the difference in social status between husband and wife. And the fact that it was she who proposed to him.

Ibn-Ishaq describes her as “a merchant woman of dignity and wealth, a determined, noble, and intelligent woman.” It’s unusual to see the words “determined” and “intelligent” used about any woman of the time, but in Khadija’s case they were entirely appropriate. Twice widowed, she had inherited her second husband’s share in the Meccan caravan cartel, which meant that she was financially independent— not as wealthy as the leading Meccan merchants, but certainly comfortably situated. She now had a choice: she could sell her business to one of the powerful trading blocs or continue as an independent, in which case she’d need someone she could trust to represent her interests on the trade caravans. A business manager, essentially, who knew the business well and would not put his own interests ahead of hers.

In the year 695, she hired Muhammad to be her agent on the Damascus-bound caravan, and by one account sent a trusted servant along with him with instructions to report back on how he handled her affairs. The servant, a slave called Maysara, returned with a story that echoes that of Bahira fifteen years earlier. Muhammad had sought shade beneath a tree near a monk’s cell in Syria, he said, and the monk, seeing him there, had been amazed. “None has ever halted beneath this tree but a prophet,” he told Maysara, who then upped the miraculous by claiming that as the heat grew intense toward noon on the homeward journey, he had seen two angels shading Muhammad.

It seems somewhat insulting to Khadija to conclude, as ibn-Ishaq does, that this report is what impelled her to propose marriage. That is the problem with miracle stories: if you look at them closely, they tend to boomerang. This one implies that without the monk and the angels, Khadija would never have considered marriage, though she hardly needed someone else to tell her either that Muhammad was a trustworthy manager or that there was far more to him.

He had already built an excellent reputation in his years working with abu-Talib. Instead of haggling endlessly, offering lower prices and demanding higher ones than he knew he would get, he offered fair prices from the start—and because he was known to be fair, was given better-quality merchandise in return. He never took an extra cut for himself under the table or fudged the expense reports (such practices being as old as trade itself), so after abu-Talib had rejected him as a son-in-law, he became a sought-after independent agent, working on commission. A man for hire, that is, with no interests of his own to promote, to the degree that he seemed almost to disdain the profit motive that ruled Mecca.